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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Monthly Archives: July 2013

How High-Stakes Testing Strangles Motivation and Competition

31 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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Ability Grouping, Competition, Education Reform, High-Stakes Testing, K-12 Education, MAP-M, MAP-R, Montgomery County Public Schools, Motivation, Mount Vernon public schools, MSA, SRA, Teacher Effectiveness, Teaching and Learning, Teaching Styles, Testing, Tracking


Homer strangles Bart (again), The Simpsons, February 2011. (http://www.goodwp.com/).

Homer strangling Bart (again), The Simpsons, February 2011. (http://www.goodwp.com/).

One of the biggest casualties in the current K-12 education reform effort — otherwise known as measuring teacher effectiveness through high-stakes testing — is the notion of competition, academic and otherwise. At least, students competing to make themselves better students, better athletes and even better people in the process of matriculating through elementary, middle and high school. Competition suffers when the teaching, motivational, psychological and financial resources necessary to level the K-12 playing field have gone instead to testing companies and psychometricians.

So much has been the emphasis on testing and raising test scores that most in education reform now think competition among students on the K-12 stage is an abomination that must be rooted out, and not part and parcel of the learning and human development process. This is really too bad. For what often makes school fun for children is a healthy dose of competition throughout the process.

To use myself and my ten-year-old son as but two examples of what has occurred in K-12 education reform over the past three and a half decades, it is apparent to most educators how much has changed as a result of the fear of competition and lack of autonomy to motivate students. Testing, of course, was part of my educational experience growing up. From third grade through sixth grade in Mount Vernon, New York’s public schools, the school district tested us with the SRA (Science Research Associates, Inc.) exam in reading comprehension and mathematics every spring. At the end of the school year, we’d learn how well or not so well we tested in these areas in terms of grade level.

Data mining (one of the hallmarks of reduced teacher autonomy), cropped and edited, September 2006. (http://www.qualitydigest.com).

Data mining (one of the hallmarks of reduced teacher autonomy), cropped and edited, September 2006. (http://www.qualitydigest.com).

The Mount Vernon Board of Education used the test for two purposes. One, it was a diagnostic exam, as it would show students with reading and math comprehension skills at, above or below grade level. When I took the SRA in third grade, for example, I read at the 3.9 grade level, or on par as a third marking period third-grader. When I took the fourth grade version of the SRA the following year, I had jumped up to a 7.4 in reading, or the equivalent of a mid-year seventh-grader.

The district used the SRA for a second purpose, though, at least by the end of sixth grade. It was part of a package that determined what academic track a student would take as they moved on to middle school. In my case, my straight A’s and my SRA scores (which put me at the 12th grade level in reading comprehension and 11th grade level in math) put me in the gifted-track magnet program called Humanities in 1981. For some of my elementary school classmates, it meant general education classes, or, in a couple of cases, remedial or special education classes.

Ability tracking through an examination and grades over four years has its own sinister flaws in terms of race and class — it has tended to disadvantage Black students, especially poor Black kids. But it at least wasn’t the constant mantra of testing that millions like my ten-year-old son has faced since he began kindergarten in August 2008. For nearly every year, my son has taken a school-level, county-district level, or state-level exam in Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools, including MAP-M and MAP-R, TerraNova and the MSA assessments. What’s more, teachers have administered practice versions of these exams (including unit guides and what they call formatives) about once every six weeks during the school year since my son began second grade.

The constant testing would be meaningful if teachers could get together and decide at the classroom level how best to address students’ needs in areas like reading comprehension and mathematics. These determinations now are tightly controlled at the state, district and school leadership levels, leaving teachers with little room to use their abilities to, well, teach. Really, motivating students — the most critical tool a teacher has in challenging students to become better learners — has become a secondary tool. Especially since these test scores only count in favor or against individual teachers and individual schools, and not specifically for or against students.

Robot teaching math 3d illustration, July 31, 2013. (http://www.123rf.com).

Robot teaching math 3d illustration, July 31, 2013. (http://www.123rf.com).

The last piece is a good thing. Most educators now agree that ability grouping or tracking has fostered too much competition for a school district’s resources among students, teachers, administrators and parents. K-12 education reform has leaned so far the other way, though, that teachers have virtually no say in the curriculum from which they teach, even in kindergarten, and have little from which to motivate their students as learners. In fact, teachers and school-level administrators are the only ones with some motivation and sense of competition, as dollars and jobs are at stake every spring as a result of annual testing. This motivation, though, is all about teaching students how to get better test scores, and not about actual learning, development or academic improvement, a poor way to reform K-12 education.

And it is the motivation to learn that sparks the competition necessary for students to improve themselves, to work with each other to become better students. Another student’s success can even encourage other students to work harder, to make themselves better academically, athletically or even socially. In the current K-12-as-laboratory-experiment-environment, this theme of motivation and healthy competition leading to student success is not only missing. For reformers, it’s been deliberately omitted, as if poor kids and students of color in urban environments don’t need motivation and competition to become better students and people.

10 Years Come and (Not) Gone

30 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Marriage, Movies, music, race, Religion, Youth

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"Clocks", Child Birth, Coldplay, Father-Son Relationships, Fatherhood, Growing Up, Hopes and Dreams, Noah, The Lord of the Rings trilogy


Two different Noahs, nearly 10 years apart, August 21, 2003 and July 26, 2013. (Angelia N. Levy and Donald Earl Collins).

Two different Noahs, nearly 10 years apart, August 21, 2003 and July 26, 2013. (Angelia N. Levy and Donald Earl Collins).

Today my son Noah turns ten! That’s wonderful! But it’s also a reminder of both the passing of my youthful energy and relative innocence and the path toward his adulthood and future.

I note my son’s birthday in both small and big ways. I’ve been playing Coldplay’s “Clocks” incessantly for the past week and a half, because it was the summer of Coldplay when Noah was born. Every HBO promotion of shows and movies that summer had the “Clocks” melody in it, so I couldn’t get away from it even when I wanted to.

Every time I watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy I think for a moment of the summer of ’03 and Noah’s birth, My wife was literally days away from going into labor when we watched it in a marathon session — at home and in the movie theater.

I think of seeing the crown of my son’s matted hair about five minutes before the final push on this day. I think of the fact that I basically floated on happiness and hopes, dreams fulfilled and exceeded in the year before Noah’s birth. I don’t think that I ever felt so much romantic love as the love I felt for my wife and son this time a decade ago.

But I also think of the regrets of my past and the need to ensure that my son doesn’t make the same mistakes I did. To go after what he wants for his life, for his happiness. To not refuse genuine help, friendship or love when offered. To trust with wisdom and discernment, in himself and in others, knowing that some who may call him friend may yet betray that trust. To be content with being a contrarian, but not too content. To allow himself the opportunity of failure so that no early love in his life goes unrequited, and so that even his parents know his mind and heart.

I think, too, of my son’s future, of how we keep him on the path to college, a career and calling that he doesn’t lose sight of or regret later on, of the connections he’ll need to make along the way. And of the money we’ve already spent to get him this far. A quarter million on housing, $80,000 on child care, a paid-off ’04 Honda Element and numerous other expenditures just to get him to fifth grade. With middle school and high school and high-stakes testing, sports and summer camps, more travels for vacation and family visits to come.

I’m exhausted already, and my son’s my only child. But if nothing else, with what’s left of my dwindling youth, I want to make sure that Noah never has to search for faith, for God or wisdom or hope to hold on to. That, at least, I can secure, if nothing else. Through book and other means, all is with him already.

The Things Dumb Racists Say

27 Saturday Jul 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Movies, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion

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Anthea Butler, Bigotry, Ignorance, Professor Anthea Butler, Racism, Religious Studies, The American President (1995), Trolls, Tumblr, Twitter, UPenn, Willful Ignorance, Zimmerman Trial, Zimmerman Verdict


John Bauer's illustration from Walter Stenström's The boy and the trolls or The Adventure in childrens' anthology Among pixies and trolls (1915), November 1, 2005. (Thuresson via Wikipedia). In public domain.

John Bauer’s illustration from Walter Stenström’s The boy and the trolls or The Adventure, in childrens’ anthology Among Pixies and Trolls (1915), November 1, 2005. (Thuresson via Wikipedia). In public domain.

I loved, I loved, I loved reading and hearing what Anthea Butler had to say in the wake of the Zimmerman not-guilty verdict from two weeks ago (via her piece “The Zimmerman Verdict: America’s Racist God” and MSNBC). I love the courage and strength she’s shown over the past two weeks in standing up to the trolls in social media who’ve literally called her everything except a child of God in expressing the very racism they’ve attempted to deny.

If I’ve been reminded of nothing else in the past fortnight, it’s the fact that the US has a significant reading and writing crisis. In looking at Butler’s The Things People Say Tumblr page, it’s never been clearer to me that the average American can’t write a single sentence without a significant misspelling or grammatical error, and that angry people expressing their bigotry are even more prone to screw up the English language in any form.

UPenn Professor Anthea Butler, circa 2011. (http://www.sas.upenn.edu/religious_studies/faculty/butler).

UPenn Professor Anthea Butler, circa 2011. (http://www.sas.upenn.edu/religious_studies/faculty/butler).

Yet the most ignorant thing I’ve seen beyond the indirect threats, the nasty racist name-calling and the demeaning of academia for making Butler one of their “affirmative action” hires is the sheer ignorance about religion, Christianity and the ways in which this group of (mostly) White trolls has use both to justify their vitriol and racism. On one level, it’s pretty simple. How dare this [pick any expletive and add either the N-word or the C-word] say anything to point out how some Whites use Christianity and God to support their racist world views, right?

But this simplicity belies a greater truth. That not one of Butler’s post-Zimmerman trolls understood their own religion and the walk of Christianity. They haven’t a clue as to the sheer work it would take to earn any doctorate, much less one in religious studies. These folks have no idea that a PhD in religious studies doesn’t require becoming a priest or a pastor, or sounding all high-brow and polite in the face of injustice. (Heck, I’ve met religious studies professors who are agnostic or atheists!).

They are ignorant, and willfully so. My guess is, they are a small sample size of maybe 100 million Americans — mostly, but hardly exclusively White — who wallow in ignorance thinking that this will shield them from the inexorable march toward a majority of color country that the US will be well before mid-twenty-first century. The fact is, Butler’s trolls are so scared of change that they are threatened by a seventeen-year-old wearing a hoodie with cellphone, Skittles and iced tea in hand. As well as by a University of Pennsylvania professor who they see as unqualified (a bit of a contradiction to be threatened by someone they see as insignificant, but that’s racism for ya!).

I might have worded it a bit differently, though (but then again, I’m a different writer, no?). As a Christian for more than twenty-nine years, I don’t see my God as one who represents racist Whites. After all, we are commanded to “treat our neighbors as we would treat ourselves.”

Evelyn de Morgan's The Worship of Mammon (1909), September 7, 2006. (Shell Kinney via Wikipedia). In public domain.

Evelyn de Morgan’s The Worship of Mammon (1909), September 7, 2006. (Shell Kinney via Wikipedia). In public domain.

But since Butler’s trolls obviously do think that they worship God, let me at least say this. If you believe in corporate capitalism and the corrections of the market, then your god is money, and the love of/lust for it. If you believe in the criminality of Blacks and Black male bodies, then your god is White. If you believe it’s okay to voice your displeasure by calling Butler a “n—-r c–t,” then your god is one that subjugates women, especially Black women. These beliefs do not and cannot represent my beliefs in God, in the life of Jesus, heck, in life of anyone who has ever spoken on behalf of social justice and human rights in history.

To misquote The American President (1995):

“Professor Anthea Butler has done nothing to you, trolls….You want a character debate? You better stick with me, ‘cuz Professor Anthea Butler is way out of your league.”

We Have Syllogisms, But I Have Silly-isms

20 Saturday Jul 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Movies, music, Pittsburgh, Pop Culture, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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"Once In A Lifetime" (1983), Anita Baker, Authors, Book Titles, Books, Chicago, Chicago 17, Christine Stansell, Derrick Bell, Graduate School, Leon Litwack, Memory, Otis Redding, Patricia Cooper, Sean Wilentz, Silly-isms, Syllogisms, The Commodores, The Police, Writing Craft


Bad Math (2+2=5) picture, July 20, 2013. (http://www.scenicreflections.com).

Bad Math (2+2=5) picture, July 20, 2013. (http://www.scenicreflections.com).

I’m far from done discussing issues of race, racism, civil rights and education this summer. Not by a long shot. Especially with the half-century anniversary of the March on Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois’ death just over five weeks away. But a one or two blog break is needed, if only because I need it today.

When it comes to so many things in my life, my memory is better than IBM’s Watson. You give me a date anytime in the previous seventy years, I can tell you within a day what day of the week it falls on. I can tell you what I had for dinner on many a given day twenty or thirty years ago, what 616 smelled like in the middle of a July heat wave in ’82, and which of my former Humanities classmates were dating in the summer of ’85. Yeah, and where I walked to clear my head on any given Saturday or Sunday between July ’85 and August ’87.

But I frequently forget people’s names, but never their faces. I forget to bring reuseable bags with me to the grocery store, but recall physics facts and figures I haven’t looked at since AP Physics my senior year of high school. And — most importantly for today’s post — I often forget book titles. But I almost always remember the book’s content, context, audience, writing tone and style, where it fits in the historical literature or in its genre (and even whether it gave me a headache or inspired me), or whether it forced me to truly change the way I thought about a given issue or topic.

When I was a grad student at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon, reading books the way Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi suck down hot dogs, I couldn’t keep the book titles in my head when I referred to them in seminars or in my papers. I just couldn’t. Maybe it was because the titles were boring, or because the books themselves were regurgitative snore-fests. Whatever the case, by the middle of my second year of grad school in late ’92, I needed a way to find a way back to a title and an author’s name, especially when in class refuting another student’s argument, in delivering a paper at a conference, or in answering questions from my professors about multiculturalism.

Otis Redding, The Dock of The Bay (posthumous album - 1968), July 20, 2013. (http://vibe.com; Atlantic Records).

Otis Redding, The Dock of The Bay (posthumous album – 1968), July 20, 2013. (http://vibe.com; Atlantic Records).

That’s when I inadvertently took my penchant for pop cultural references and began applying them liberally to the task of keeping book titles and authors’ names straight in my head. (I would’ve tried to memorize them otherwise). It started with the late Derrick Bell’s Faces at the Bottom of the Well (1992), which somehow bounced around a few neurons to conjure Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay” (1966). I didn’t need Redding to remind me of Bell or the title of his best-selling allegorical book. What it did, though, was free my mind to think of my massive amounts of reading on two levels, one scholarly, and one as reminders of my life and the lives of those suffering from inequality on the basis of race, class, gender and education.

So, when more boring book titles and/or books would come along, my mind would automatically go there. I turned David Tyack’s One Best System (1974) — a book about America’s K-12 system as a sorting out machine for the majority of the nation’s students — into Paul Carrick’s “One Good Reason,” a minor pop hit from ’88. My mind translated Patricia Cooper’s Once a Cigar Maker — all about gender and working-class issues in industrialization at the turn of the twentieth century — into Chicago’s “Once In A Lifetime” (not a hit, but on the Chicago 17 album). Or, even more often, I’d go, “You’re once, twiiiceee, three times a cigar maker, and I looooathe you” — a nod to Lionel Richie and The Commodores.

Anita Baker's Rapture (1986) album cover, July 20, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).

Anita Baker’s Rapture (1986) album cover, July 20, 2013. (Donald Earl Collins).

I went further — and sillier — as I transferred from the University of Pittsburgh to CMU. Sean Wilentz’s Chants Democratic (1984) became Sean Wilentz “and the Pirates of Penzance” because of the rhyme scheme between “Wilentz” and “Chants.” Historian Christine Stansell was “don’t stand, don’t stand so, don’t Stansell close to me,” my homage to The Police. Leon Litwack’s Been in the Storm So Long (1979) became Anita Baker’s “Been So Long” (1986) from her Rapture album, while Michael Katz’s In the Shadow of the Poorhouse (1989) for me morphed into “Under The Poorhouse,” set to the tune of The Drifters’ “Under The Boardwalk” (1964).

It’s been nearly two decades since my last graduate seminar, yet I still find myself setting my book titles and authors to tunes and cinema. It makes reading an adventure for me, even as it helps me remember who wrote what. Silly, yes, it’s true. But don’t tell me I’m the only one who does this!

38.990666 -77.026088

Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Fantasy,” My Reality

18 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, earth, wind & fire, Eclectic, eclectic music, Mount Vernon New York, music, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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"Fantasy" (1978), Anger, Anger Management, Bigotry, Fear, Forgiveness, George Zimmerman, Lyrics, Police Brutality, Racism, Reality, Trayvon Martin, Zimmerman Trial


n  Cover of Earth, Wind & Fire's single "Fantasy" (1978), February 29, 2008. (Columbia Records). Qualifies as fair use due to low resolution and subject matter of this blog post.

Cover of Earth, Wind & Fire’s single “Fantasy” (1978), February 29, 2008. (Columbia Records). Qualifies as fair use due to low resolution and subject matter of this blog post.

Below are two excerpts from Boy @ The Window about how I viewed Mount Vernon, New York and my world between the ages of ten and twelve:

“My only links to the great metropolis to the south were WNBC-TV (Channel 4), Warner Wolf – with his famous “Let’s go to the video tape!” line – doing sports on WCBS-TV (Channel 2), and WABC-AM 77 and WBLS-FM 107.5 on the radio. I found the AM station more fun to listen to, but I also liked listening to the sign-off song WBLS played at the end of the evening, Moody’s Mood for Love, with that, ‘There I go, There I go, The-ere I go…’ start. Music had been an important part of my imagination in ’79, with acts like Earth, Wind & Fire, Christopher Cross, Billy Joel and The Commodores. Not to mention Frank Sinatra, Queen, Donna Summer and Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall album. The music also made me feel like I was as much a part of New York as I was a part of Mount Vernon. It left me thinking of the ozone and burnt rubber smell that I noticed as soon as I would walk down into the Subway system in Manhattan…

“Besides the occasional reminder of life outside of my world, of Mount Vernon, I was the center of my own universe. Mount Vernon was but a stage on which my life played out, a place I hoped would stay this way forever. I was an eleven-year-old who thought that my world was the world. I lived my life like Philip Bailey and Maurice White would’ve wanted me to. I came to see ‘victory in a life called fantasy’ as my own life, living as if my imagination and dreams could be made into reality. All I had to do was wish it so.”

(And yes, I know the actual lyrics are about a land called fantasy, but that’s not how I sang it back then).

There have been so many moments since then where my Earth, Wind & Fire visions have collided with the reality that life for me and people who look like me has hardly been a fantasy. I had to get over my idiot ex-stepfather’s abuse in order to even listen to Earth, Wind & Fire again, because he was a fan as well, and I didn’t want us to both like the same music. But even more than that has been the reality that there are people, places and things who’ve (and that have) come through my life and stood in between me and all the things I wanted out of life. Individuals like Joe Trotter or Ken, policies like racial profiling and redlining, institutions like Columbia University or the former Academy for Educational Development.

The Enchanted Garden of Messer Ansaldo (1889), by Marie Spartali Stillman, March 7, 2006. (Charivari via Wikipedia). In public domain.

The Enchanted Garden of Messer Ansaldo (1889), by Marie Spartali Stillman, March 7, 2006. (Charivari via Wikipedia). In public domain.

While some of these instances have been disappointing in the sense of betrayal that I felt, the disillusionment that came with these incidents of discrimination and harassment pushed me ever closer to the person and writer I wanted to be. I don’t know what to make of how I’ve been feeling about the Zimmerman trial and verdict, the response of so-called White liberals and more obviously racist and gleeful White teabaggers over the past five days. I’ve felt badly for Trayvon Martin’s family, Rachel Jeantel and for so many others who’ve been figuratively beaten down by media coverage and stereotypes over the past months.

But I didn’t think I was angry. Not until I went for a run this morning. It’s was a comparatively pedestrian 3.1-mile run after I’d done a five-miler a day and a half before. Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Fantasy” started playing on my iPod as I was running uphill. All it made me think about was all the challenges that I and so many others have had to face because of individual bigotry and fear and institutional racism and indifference. I know that many things in life aren’t fair. What I realized at that moment, though, was that there really are folks in this world who wish evil and unfairness on people like me. That’s their fantasy!

That made me angry again, but not for too long. For I also knew that I had the power to ask for forgiveness, as well as the power to forgive others. It’s a power that no one can take away from me, that enables me to be honest about where I am, and clear-headed about where I want to go. That power, among others, does truly help bring my “mind to everlasting liberty.” Even in the face of the evil, indifference and ignorance that I see every day.

38.990666 -77.026088

Richard Cohen & Rational Racism

17 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, New York City, Politics, race, Youth

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Affirmative Action, Derrick Bell, Paternalism, Racial Profiling, Racism, Richard Cohen, Stop and Frisk, Ta-Nehisi Coates, White Liberals, Whiteness


Electron microscope image of a lymphocyte, (a.k.a. cancer cell), September 20, 1976. (Dr. Triche/NCI via Wikipedia). In public domain.

Electron microscope image of a lymphocyte, (a.k.a. cancer cell), September 20, 1976. (Dr. Triche/NCI via Wikipedia). In public domain.

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ response to Richard Cohen’s “Racism vs. reality” column in The Washington Post (July 15, 2013) is so spot on that I had to post something about it. “The Banality of Richard Cohen and Racist Profiling” is a must read for anyone who’s tired of those White “liberals” who remain okay with racism for the sake of perceived safety. Below was my two cents on both Coates’ piece and the sidetracking some whom commented on Coates’ piece tried to do by equating racial profiling with affirmative action:

“Richard Cohen is no different than the racist and race-baiting journalists of not too long ago. You know, the ones who’d put ‘Negro Rapes A White Girl’ on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post or New York Times, back in the days when Whites would riot and destroy Black neighborhoods upon seeing such headlines. All to sell newspapers, not to actually start a real and serious dialogue on race, racism and remedies.

And this is precisely what makes Cohen and his ill-conceived logic so dangerous. His is a piece that’s meant to make White ‘liberals’ feel okay about the denial of humanity and rights to Blacks. Especially since White ‘liberals’ must also feel that they’re protected and safe from the Black male boogieman criminal.

Don’t get caught up in a debate about affirmative action as some sort of intellectual counterbalance. It’s a false equivalency, plain and simple. More to the point, it’s a distraction from the real point. Like TNC, the late Derrick Bell wrote about this at length. The idea that we as African Americans, male and female, must embody all of the evils and stereotypes of this nation in order for Whites to feel safe. It’s so insulting, so soul-destroying, so infuriating, this immutable racism of Cohen and the millions of folk who think like him.”

Hey George

16 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, music, Politics, race

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"Hey Joe" (1966/67), George Zimmerman, Injustice, Jimi Hendrix, Juror B37, Justice System, Lyrics, Murder, Trayvon Martin, Whiteness


One of 1st George Zimmerman mugshots, February 26, 2012. (http://nydailynews.com).

One of 1st George Zimmerman mugshots, February 26, 2012. (http://nydailynews.com).

Cover for The Jimi Hendrix Experience's "Hey Joe" single, February 28, 2010. (Kohoutek1138 via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use because of picture's low resolution.

Cover for The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Hey Joe” single, February 28, 2010. (Kohoutek1138 via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use because of picture’s low resolution.

I’d originally planned to use Jimi Hendrix’s version of the classic lyrics from “Hey Joe” (1966/67) to talk about my former doctoral/dissertation advisor Joe Trotter. But even Trotter wasn’t evil and emotionally disconnected enough to attempt to end my life, even though his decisions could’ve easily ended my career before it started.

In any case, below is my ode to George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s murderer, walking free because of racism and Whiteness, a racially stacked deck of law enforcement and criminal justice. Some won’t like what I did to Hendrix’s song. Others likely will. I can only imagine what Hendrix would say:

“Hey George, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand
Hey George, I said where you goin’ with that gun in your hand
I’m goin’ down to shoot that young man
You know I caught him walkin’ ’round with a different shade, man
Yeah, I’m goin’ down to shoot that young punk
You know I caught him walkin’ ’round with a different shade, man
Huh! and that ain’t cool
Huh hey George, I heard you shot your n—-r down
You shot him down now
Hey George, I heard you shot that asshole down
You shot him down in the ground yeah!
Yeah!
Yes, I did, I shot him
You know I caught him walkin’ round walkin’ round town
Huh, yes I did I shot him
You know I caught that young n—-r walkin’ ’round town
And I gave him the gun
And I shot him
Alright
Shoot him one more time again baby!
Yeah!”
….

“Hey George, I said
Where you gonna run to now, where you gonna go
I’m goin’ stay down south
Stay down in Florida way
Alright
I’m goin’ stay down South
Way down where I can be free
Ain’t no one gonna jail me
Ain’t no hang-man gonna
He ain’t gonna put a rope around me
You better believe it right now”

The saddest truth is, George Zimmerman, his brother, his family, Juror B37 and others of his racist, murdering ilk will like this rendition and see it as soul-affirming, rather than a simple but painful truth about this nation in which we live.

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Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Places to Buy/Download Boy @ The Window

There's a few ways in which you can read excerpts of, borrow and/or purchase and download Boy @ The Window. There's the trade paperback edition of Boy @ The Window, available for purchase via Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Window-Donald-Earl-Collins/dp/0989256138/

There's also a Kindle edition on Amazon.com. The enhanced edition can be read only with Kindle Fire, an iPad or a full-color tablet. The links to the enhanced edition through Apple's iBookstore and the Barnes & Noble NOOK edition are below. The link to the Amazon Kindle version is also immediately below:

scr2555-proj697-a-kindle-logo-rgb-lg

Boy @ The Window on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-The-Window-Memoir-ebook/dp/B00CD95FBU/

iBookstore-logo-300x100

Boy @ The Window on Apple's iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/boy-the-window/id643768275?ls=1

Barnes & Noble (bn.com) logo, June 26, 2013. (http://www.logotypes101.com).

Boy @ The Window on Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/boy-the-window-donald-earl-collins/1115182183?ean=2940016741567

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